Next let’s go to the third page. There are four sculptures on the four sides of the Kodumbalur temple tower. The first sculpture is an idol sitting on a lotus leaf. Although the statue is slightly damaged, only the lotus leaf is clearly visible. It may be an idol of Brahman. Most temples do not have a separate shrine or idol for Brahman. But the statue of him in this temple is special.
Next to it are two idols of Dwara Balagars. It may have once been located in front of the wall of the temple. But now it is kept separately at the temple gate. It seemed to me that both the idols were in an inappropriate place to be seen now rather than where they were when the temple was built originally.
The Tanjore Great Temple has similar statues of Dwara Balars. But it is neatly placed where it should be. As far as the Kodumbalur temple is concerned, the idols seem to have been misplaced due to damage and negligence.
On the top of the gopuram, Nandi idols are beautifully carved on all four sides and are intact. Only one of the two temples has a lingam. But there are no signs of worship. Not only that, it was not a lingam embedded in the earth, but the lingam was taken out and put on display.
The second sculpture we are going to see is on the other side of the tower. It is delicately carved as a male deity offering blessings. The statue stands very majestically without crumbling.
On both sides of this sculpture are female idols waving fans. Those idols are also very beautiful preserved without getting damaged.
The main thing we can learn when we see these statues is that the sculptors of that period were very imaginative and skilled in sculpting. These sculputres also help us to know how the people who lived in that period wore clothes, how they did their hairstyles and what weapons they had, have been brought realistically in the statues. If you take a close look at the idol of this deity, there is a keuram in the hand as a sign of bravery , a vest on the waist and ornaments around it. Lord Shiva’s long curled hair is beautifully carved with decorative flowers and some ornaments.
There are many weapons in the hands of this god. Perhaps he is Lord Vishnu. So it is more likely to be a sculpture of Lord Vishnu as he has weapons like Dandayutam and Vishnu Chakra in his hands.At the same time, when we see the women waving large fans near this statue, we get to know how much importance women gave in that time, what kind of clothes, accessories and hairstyles were given to these sculptures.
We have lost many treasures due to the arrival of the British. They did not know about its history and stole all the things when they left India, as a symbol of their rule of our country.Thirdly, there is a statue in the temple tower that looks like reading with a leaf in hand. Another statue appears to be holding a tambura. I think this is an idol of Narada.
A beautiful statue of Nandi lies orphaned in the clearing outside this temple. It is more likely that there were many more temples around these two temples. Apart from the fact that it has been destroyed over time, the people who lived around the temples have taken away all the stones without knowing the history of them to build the foundations of the houses they are building and for other purposes.
Both towers are built in a straight line. Standing on one side, the next temple is not visible at all,perfect parallelism. It amazes us to think how the machines were built so elegantly in those days when there were no modern equipments.
If you look at the fourth side of the tower, there is a sculpture of Nataraja. The sculpture is set up as if Rudra is dancing. The statue has four arms spread out in different ways and each hand is doing a different dance. Near the sculpture is a woman who is enjoying the dance and it is likely to be Umayyal.If we look at the decorations, we can see that almost all the sculptures have the same structure. As I said earlier, it is only with the help of statues that we know how people were in that period, what kind of clothes they wore and how they used the weapons. A surprising thing about this is why many kings who held many countries in their hands did not give importance to the moustache which is seen as a symbol of heroism. In their statues and paintings, we could not see the mustache. A mustache is seen as a symbol of valor in modern Tamil culture.
Next to the dancing maidens there is a statue of a small figure kneeling down with one leg on the ground. It could be a sculptor ,a servant or even a potter.For example, Mamallapura temples are close to the sea and many of the idols are damaged by salt airas such most figures are not clear. But this temple is located in the middle of Kodumbalur which sees no sea breeze I don’t know why it is so dilapidated. It is not known whether the stones are of less quality or because of the anti-social activities of the people.
The temples of Mamallapura are standing majestically despite various natural storms such as sea breezes and cyclones. In the next post, we will see about the five temples built using the Pallavar architecture.